Garden Tour - August 13, 2015

While we were away visiting the folks, the garden really took off.

For the record, I did not plant cherry tomatoes. Ying and Yang love them, but they never want to spend the time harvesting them.  Unfortunately, my garden is spiteful and likes to grow random cherry tomato plants all over the place.  The Tyrant has actually been helping to pick them this year, so I guess it all worked out.

The regular tomatoes are growing nicely, but I feel like there aren't as many as last year.  I guess starting all the seeds late really did make a difference.

My mom gave me these bean seeds, I have no clue what kind they are.  Two plants supplied us with beans for many, many meals.  They turn green when you cook them!

Every year I grow basil and something goes wrong.  I never wind up with more than a few handfuls.  This year, I think I went a little overboard.  I know, that's an understatement...

No bell peppers, just bell pepper plants.  All the cilantro bolted before I used any of it.

I love all the eggplants!  I have to grow more plants next year.

Something ate the leaves off of the broccoli and cauliflower, as well as lots of the beans.  I'm guessing it's the groundhogs.  I thought they were happy with the pears, I guess not.

I feel like the cantaloupe are taking forever to ripen.

Same with the watermelon.

Most of the cucumber plants are shriveled up and dying, but there are a few still growing. 

The kale is going strong.

My beautiful white onion flowers are now all black seeds.

 I only made one batch of lox before the dill flowers dried up and turned to seed.

We only ate two artichoke.  Someone, who will remain nameless, never cut any while I was away.

See!  A million pears!  Why couldn't the groundhogs just be happy with them? Our squirrel and our cardinals seem super happy eating them.

It's good the wildlife can eat them, because they started getting these weird dark spots and never get soft or sweet anymore.  Granted, the tree is over twenty years old, so it is what it is.

I started a new batch of cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower seeds.  Hopefully the groundhogs will be hibernating by the time they go into the garden.

Book Review: A JEWISH BAKER'S PASTRY SECRETS by George Greenstein

A Jewish Baker's Pastry Secrets, Recipes from a New York Baking Legend, for Strudel, Stollen, Danishes, Puff Pastry and More by George Greenstein with Elaine Greenstein, Julia Greenstein and Isaac Bleicher offers a collection of recipes and tips for a variety of classic pastries.

At first glance, I will say at this price point, it should be a bigger book.  Cover included, it's maybe an inch thick.  Second, there are no pictures.  In fairness, I have a lot of good cookbooks without pictures.  Finally, many of the recipes call for the use of nonfat dry milk powder.  I know a lot of bakers use it, but honestly, it's so darn expensive and you have to buy these huge boxes when you buy it.  So not only would I have to find a home for that big box, but it makes recipes with it less cost effective than just going to a bakery and buying whatever it is you were going to make.

Okay, I'm done complaining about nonfat dry milk powder, maybe it's cheap where you are...

Those three points aside, I actually like this book.  The first chapter talks about equipment, tools and ingredients along with notes that I think a beginner baker would find helpful.  For example, "Bakers prefer to use cream that is at least 2 to 3 days old.  Many claim that it whips up both thicker and with extra volume."  Who knew?  The second chapter has a lot of the basic fillings, icings and whatnot you'll need for other recipes.  The next eight chapters begin with a master dough recipe, Bundt, Babka, Gugelhopf, etc. followed by recipes using those doughs.  Most of the directions seemed easy to follow.  Others could have used a picture to help illustrate the directions, for example the Cinnamon Babka Loaf had some complicated rolling and twisting directions that I'm going to have find a demo on youtube if I want to have it look right.
 

WOULD I BUY IT?  I will give it a tentative yes, to be updated at a later time.  It's 90 plus degrees out and the idea of baking doesn't appeal to me right now, so I haven't had a chance to try any of these recipes.  But the ingredients, other than my nonfat dry milk powder aversion, are simple to find, the recipes are easy to follow and with George Greenstein's glowing reputation, I'm sure all of these recipes in A Jewish Baker's Pastry Secrets are going to be amazing.

I received a free copy of this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.  There was no obligation to give a positive review, and if you read my blog, you know I'm a tell-it-like it is kind of girl.  I mean what I say and say what I mean, that holds true for my review.

Garden Tour - June 20, 2015

I haven't been going out in the garden lately.  We've been having quite the heatwave here in Jersey.

I was gazing outside my window, checking out the garden and low and behold, what did I see...

an artichoke!  Three tangerine sized artichokes, I could not believe it.

I had some store bought potatoes start growing inside the potato bin.

I put them inside the garden, because I feel like things that want to grow

should be given the opportunity to grow.  Aren't the flowers pretty?

I am not exactly sure what kind of beans these are, my mom gave me the seeds.

So far, all I have are pretty flowers and lots of vines, but I'm sure we'll get some beans soon.

How cute is that watermelon!?!?

The cantaloupes were only kind of sweet last year.  I read that they are

heavy feeders and extra doses of compost or fertilizer should help them be super sweet.

I'll let you know how that works out.

I have picked so many cucumbers.  I made a bunch of bread and butter pickles using the recipe

I thought I used last year, but it's not the right one!  Crappola.  Now I have to try a bunch of 

different recipes to figure out which is the right one.  This is why I am now writing notes next to all the recipes I try, so me...and possibly the Tyrant if she ever gets into cooking...will know what's what.

Only one of my eggplant seedlings survived, but thankfully, a lovely person on Freecycle had a few extras.  This is one of them.  I can't wait for these tiny eggplants to be full sized.

None of my lettuce seeds survived, wtf?  Very irritating.  Instead, I've started

sticking the ends of romaine lettuce from the store in the ground.  Now we should have a nice staggered harvest of romaine lettuce.

I am pretty sure this was one kale plant that has grown a million side shoots and is producing an enormous amount of kale.  At first I wasn't eating it, because I heard it's tough and bitter after it bolts.

I think I'm going to throw caution to the wind and harvest a bunch for lunch tomorrow.

The onion flowers are turning into onion seeds.

I love this mammoth dill.  It's so pretty, attracts beneficial bugs and makes very nice lox.

These too are starting to go to seed.

Except for the cherry tomatoes, all of our tomatoes are still green.

Those dead leaves are courtesy of the heatwave.

I'm saving this spot for fall crops.  In the meantime, I planted a ton of basil...

...and cilantro, which will probably bolt in the next five minutes just because it's annoying like that.

No flowers or peppers yet, but I'm hopeful.  For some reason, peppers are a crap shoot around here.  Either you get a huge plant with no peppers, or you get a million peppers.  Fingers crossed...

By the way, I used the soaker hoses in twice.  So glad we got them in early.

Book Review: THE BROAD FORK by Hugh Acheson

Let me begin by saying, I love cookbooks.  I love to leaf through them, gaze adoringly at the pictures and dream of future meals.  What I don't love is the nonsensical writing that surrounds the recipes. Just tell me how to make the food!  My point is while I normally sidestep the obligatory filler material in cook books, I actually read everything in this book.  Everything.  I know!  Craziness!

I've watched Hugh Acheson on Top Chef, so I was prepared for his writing in The Broad Fork to be colorful.  The truth is it wasn't just colorful; it was the perfect mix of snark and storytelling.  I recommend when you buy this book, which you should, that you sit outside in this beautiful summer weather, in your favorite chair, with a cup of coffee by your side, because you're going to want to spend some time really reading this book.  Here...pretend he's sitting with you...

Photo courtesy of Andrew Thomas Lee

Now the important part, the recipes.  For anyone wondering, this is not a vegetarian cookbook.  It is a book that teaches you how to cook not only your standards, but those vegetables that you walk buy at the grocery store (or farmer's market, if you're fancy) and say to yourself, "Thanks, but no thanks.  What would I do with you?"  Then those poor vegetables sit there sadly, like puppies in the pet store window, waiting for someone more adventurous to take a chance on them.  Now you can be that adventurous person! Look, you can do more with Brussels sprouts than saute them with bacon for Thanksgiving.  Who knew?

I like that amidst the more complicated recipes (complicated as in there are more steps than the average person might want to be bothered with), there are plenty of easy quick ones.  I really like that he pickles and ferments a lot of these vegetables too.  I also like that he broke everything down by season, so you know that Fall is the best time to make this Slow Cooker Apple Butter.

WOULD I BUY IT?  I think you can tell, that's a definite yes.  I like his style of writing.  I like the diversity of recipes.  Mostly, I think The Broad Fork really is a good cookbook.  He says in the intro, "It is a book that I hope will live in your kitchen rather than a on your coffee table, because not one of us cooks at our coffee table."  It's found a home in my kitchen, I hope it finds one in yours.

 I received a free copy of this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.  There was no obligation to give a positive review, and if you read my blog, you know I'm a tell-it-like it is kind of girl.  I mean what I say and say what I mean, that holds true for my review.

Garden Tour - June 10, 2015

I grow and harvest the shelling peas.

The Little Tyrant shells and eats them all by herself.

I am not sure why I grew beets.  I never know when to harvest them.

Whenever I think it's time, they wind up being the size of a gumball.

By the way, those are not clover, those are wood sorrel.

I also swore off bush beans, because the mosquitoes love to live in them.

Yet again, I planted string beans.  I have the seeds!  I don't want to waste them...

I started everything late, so the tomatoes are only now starting to look like real plants.

I had a handful of random tomato seedlings pop up around the garden.  

I think we're up to about twenty now.  I stopped keeping track of what is where, 

so I have no clue what types I have growing where.

The watermelon seems to be doing better than the cantaloupe. 

We are finally out of pickles, so I can't wait for the cucumbers to come in.

Mmm...zucchini bread...

Speaking of things I don't know when to harvest...the onions are still here.

And now they have flowers.

This is either broccoli, cauliflower or cabbage...

As you might have guessed, the overwintered kale I was excited about, it bolted.

Then, the flowers came and now it's all seeds.  I read that I have to wait for them to start

to dry, then I have to cut them, let them fully dry and harvest the seeds.

 I noticed either aphids or maybe they were white flies on the kale seed pods.  I don't know.

What I do know is a ladybug has found its way to my kale and is (knock on wood)

eating all of them.  I hope to have a ladybug house built soon.

We got a toad house on freecycle.  I'm pretty sure our toad is not living in it.

The Little Tyrant is happy to keep filling his dish with water, so I'll leave it for now.

This a picture of our toad being camera shy.  We named him Everett.

We also named the baby bunny Munchie, because he's always munching on grass.

I forgot to take a picture, maybe next time.

I am growing Mammoth Dill, because it allegedly lures beneficial bugs

to your garden.  I'm mostly growing it so I can make more lox.

The strawberry patch is being supervised by the Little Tyrant.

At least this year she is actually sharing her strawberry harvest with us.

The sugar snap peas haven't made it inside either.

We usually pick and eat them as we work in the garden.

I started the artichokes too late again this year, but I am hopeful.

My whole yard smells like honey suckle.  Beehives next year for sure.

This was a raspberry bush.  It is now a tree.  It is getting out of control and blocking

the sun from the garden, so we'll have to trim it in the fall.

We usually don't get to eat any of the berries, because there is always a bird nest in that tree.

Those birds eat the berries.  I'm okay with that.

I noticed each year the berries are getting darker.  No more bright red raspberries.

Now they are a dark purple color and insanely sweet.

As I was picking these, I realized the real reason I don't mind the birds

eating all of the berries...picking raspberries takes forever.  I gave up pretty quickly.

This is Big Head Pete.  He says, "Be nice to animals.  Give us more cookies."

He also says, "Adopt from shelters and save a life.  And you stupid politicians

should start doing more to protect animals.  Make punishments for dog fighting

and animal abuse fit the crime, it shouldn't be a slap on the wrist."

But most importantly, "More cookies.  Real cookies.  Not the ones

with a million weird ingredients.  Mmmm, cookies."